Many Apple fans insist that Apple will not open up iOS to FB because Apple is a closed system. I think they need to think twice. Closed system may be ok for PCs because PCs are powerful and has a much bigger screen than a smartphone. User can easily found what they need on a PC. The smartphone has a very small screen this creates a problem. To be able to further customize the Home will give user tremendous usefulness.

Apple Maps did NOT effect sales of GPS units like Garmin and Tom Tom, it was first Nokia's excellent Symbian maps (such as that on the superb Nokia N95) and then Android, that came with drive by drive navigation out of the box. Apple Maps was still born, and still is. Sorry!

Regarding an affordable iPhone, Apple should make something different, that will appeal to the young and ladies, namely, an iPhone nano - the size of the current iPod nano, but, well, a phone. Effectively, a shrunk iPhone 4/4S. I warrant it will sell in HUGE quantities, because it's small size will make it an ideal first phone, and a second phone for socialites who don't want large devices when out partying or at concerts.

The iPhone nano would be a feat of engineering, but Apple have done it before...

Apple has one thing left to do to truly become independent with the best platform in the world.

...and that is to provide it's own default search engine and perhaps make Google a search an option like Bing and Yahoo.

Once that is done, it will have full control of it's platform and a much better integrated search engine.

Apple's Market Disruption Savvy comes from its research teams, but also from it's independence in platform integration and design.

Apple can make its moves without asking permission, and when a technology needed for an Apple product does not exist, it gets invented and patented.

Apple has its own search engine - Spotlight. Of course, it is not a search engine for the WWW.

Apple's market disruption savvy does not come from its research teams. If you were right, their research teams would go to the marketing team and say, "We have developed xyz. Which relevant markets would be interesting targets?" Instead, it's the other way around; Apple's (rather small and focused) marketing team goes to the engineering team and says, "We want you to make xyz. What kind of cool technology can you develop to make this a unique Apple experience?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta

The xServe example is a great one. I have always been baffled by the failure of xServe to make a dent in the market - considering how much cheaper it is. I don't buy the 'cheap drives' argument - One could buy an xServe and replace all the drives with 'enterprise level' drives and still be far less than half the cost of a Windows system.

I loved Xserve - an exemplar of clean Apple design, but your pricing equation is off. I don't know where you were buying your Windows servers but the ones we have been getting from HP and Dell in the last 20 years have NEVER been twice as expensive as Xserve, let alone Xserve with drives replaced by more expensive ones.

We miss Xserve because it always looked so cool next to the other racks.

2 - Android's other advantages are: Distribution - here, I don't see Apple catching up in markets like SE Asia where phones are sold in the majority by little tech shops in the malls. None of those little shops carry iPhones. Most never carried iPods either. Apple doesn't seem to have a good model to deal with those mom and pop operations. The effect is that in SE Asia for every iPhone on display, there are about 100 Android phones on display. That's got to have an effect on sales. iPhone success so far has been despite distribution issues.

Actually, Apple has a great model for mom and pop shops. It's for them to sign on to become Apple Authorized Resellers though Apple's Channel Partner program. If mom and pop aspire to sell iPhones or iPods, all they have to do is fill out an application, and if they agree to the terms and conditions and meet the requirements, Apple might just let them. We are nowadays used to seeing Apple Stores and "big box" retailers sell Apple products, but many mom and pop computer stores in the 80s were Apple Authorized Resellers, and that program still exists today. They probably won't meet the requirements if they're a shady cash-only, all-sales-final bazaar who couldn't advocate, operate nor support iPhones next to the "100 Android phones" they're hawking. But that's why it's great if they become Apple Channel Partners: customers get better service, mom and pop get to stand out from competing street vendors who aren't offering legit Apple products, and Apple's brand is protected.

Many Apple fans insist that Apple will not open up iOS to FB because Apple is a closed system. I think they need to think twice. Closed system may be ok for PCs because PCs are powerful and has a much bigger screen than a smartphone. User can easily found what they need on a PC. The smartphone has a very small screen this creates a problem. To be able to further customize the Home will give user tremendous usefulness.

This is not about closed v. open. Facebook Home more or less puts Android in the background. Instead of making a single Facebook phone, Home will turn existing Androids into one if Home is downloaded. You think Apple will allow that?

More than anything, I hope Apple will take cues from Home (but not just Home) to continue improving messaging, notification and gestures.

So having large profit margins and charging more for the same functionality makes Apple more prestigious? I don't quite understand your reasoning.

Maybe you are trying to defend this company because you own stock or something, I dunno.

Do you honestly think it's just about "functionality"?

You don't really get Apple do you. When you get an iPhone, you're buying into something far more than "functionality". Anyone can duplicate functionality. Not everyone can duplicate "User Experience." If you don't understand what that is, then I'm sure there's a Dell tablet somewhere with your name on it.

I loved Xserve - an exemplar of clean Apple design, but your pricing equation is off. I don't know where you were buying your Windows servers but the ones we have been getting from HP and Dell in the last 20 years have NEVER been twice as expensive as Xserve, let alone Xserve with drives replaced by more expensive ones.

If you only bought hardware, that might be relevant. When you add in software, a Windows server is far more expensive. Look at the comparison in tihs article.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ankleskater

We miss Xserve because it always looked so cool next to the other racks.

It's Xserve, btw, not xServe, btw (shows how much you know).

So the fact that I miscapitalized it somehow eliminates the ones that I've bought?

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

The xServe example is a great one. I have always been baffled by the failure of xServe to make a dent in the market - considering how much cheaper it is. I don't buy the 'cheap drives' argument - One could buy an xServe and replace all the drives with 'enterprise level' drives and still be far less than half the cost of a Windows system.

Clearly, the Enterprise market is extremely averse to change - but even that doesn't explain everything. After all, Linux has made huge inroads into the Windows server business - and OS X has many of the advantages of Linux. Sure, the xServe hardware is a bit more expensive than equivalent cheap generic hardware, but the difference is very minor.

Well the server market has become a commodity market mainly because they are all designed to run VMWare to support Linux and Windows.
I believe Apple has a internal project going with VMWare that could lead to OS X running on virtualized Apple server hardware. (i.e. Fusion on steroids)
The Apple cloud applications (iCloud.com) are few and they currently only run at Apple Data Centers but they will grow in numbers and capability.
They could potentially be sold to businesses for private Clouds in the future.

Remember the Objective-C based "WebObjects" platform from NeXT? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebObjects )
Imagine an upgraded version running in the backend on virtualized Apple Hardware supporting all the new Apple and open platform technologies and Apple development tools. (HTML5, Objective-C, X-Code, Core Data, Core Animation, OpenGL, Mapping, Siri, Searching, iWork, iMessage, iTunesU, iTunes, iBooks, FaceTime, AirPlay etc...) That would certainly disrupt the enterprise computing world as we know it today.

Time will tell.

You don't know what you are talking about. There are some excellent margins being made in the server market. Look at Cisco's UCS. It isnt cheap and they came out of no where and disrupted the server market in a big way.

Android as an open source project is and will be a huge success: various companies will make use of it in various (often incompatible) forms. Some of those forms, one day, might be truly great to rival iOS and our quality app selection, but even if not it's still a success: Android gave all those companies something to sell!

Android as a Google endeavor may not be such a success, if it helps other companies a lot and helps Google less, while Google spends the R&D money.

Android as a financial success? Yes, but only in the hands of a few specific companies (well, just Samsung? Amazon maybe?)

Even to current Apple shareholders, it looks as though the wheels have fallen off of Apple. Dilger's view is the minority view of Apple's smartphone sustainability. The future isn't written in stone, so any predictions can be taken with a grain of salt. On Wall Street market share isn't everything. It's the ONLY THING.

As an Apple shareholder, the only thing I can look forward to now is increased dividends. It doesn't appear as though Apple's share price will ever go back up to former levels. The whole of Wall Street is rigged against Apple's premium smartphone strategy, so I don't think there's any way Apple or Apple shareholders can win. Apple can make all the profit in the world and it won't change Wall Street's view of the company. Wall Street sees Apple as a doomed company and values it as such.

That might make sense - except for the fact that they dropped the xServe product. If they really planned to do anything with it in the future, you'd think they'd have kept it around - even if it was on life support. I don't recall many times (if any) when they discontinued a product and then brought it back later.

Isn't Apple the company that kept a fully working version of OS X in the back room for almost ten years? Before switching to Intel CPU's, Apple has everything needed software and hardware wise to be a player in the server market at anytime.

Originally Posted by tzeshan
Closed system may be ok for PCs because PCs are powerful and has a much bigger screen than a smartphone. User can easily found what they need on a PC. The smartphone has a very small screen this creates a problem.

Applesauce007 Would a new Apple search engine need years of user input to learn & evolve into something comparable to Google's?

All Apple has to do is offer a search solution that provides great results on page one, unlike Google who is packing page one with sponsored results more and more (Ad companies just can't help themselves).

You don't really get Apple do you. When you get an iPhone, you're buying into something far more than "functionality". Anyone can duplicate functionality. Not everyone can duplicate "User Experience." If you don't understand what that is, then I'm sure there's a Dell tablet somewhere with your name on it.

I just read the entire article and I have to say that it is nothing more than clickbait/fanboism/wishful thinking.

Apple blew a huge lead in the phone industry and there's nothing to prevent the same thing happening to the tablet industry. iOS is so very very stagnant and locked down. In 2007/8 it was awesome. Now? Meh.

So you believe Apple should open up to Facebook and let them take over Ha..Ha.., iOS, iPhone and the iPad are simply the best combo in the mobile world bar none, and everyday the fragmented unprofitable mess that is Android proves it.

PS. If you combine all of that mobile power with a Mac and a AppleTv there is nothing today that even comes close.

As much as I would like to disagree with you I think you are unfortunately right. I sold 100 shares when they reached $700 now I wish I had sold them all and pocketed a nice profit then bought back even more now. Apple is severely undervalued. You never hear analysts mention that Apple makes the lion's share in profits only that they are declining in overall global marketshare.

In the end actual profit (fundamentals) will win out, Wall Street currently thinks Netflix and Amazon are cool, but they do not make money and they never will, in six months it will be something else, Apple is in a great position when you actually look at their overall business, the only thing I don't like is the over reliance on making almost everything in China, that is one aspect that has to change long term (and Wall doesn't seem to care about that interestingly).

Many Apple fans insist that Apple will not open up iOS to FB because Apple is a closed system. I think they need to think twice. Closed system may be ok for PCs because PCs are powerful and has a much bigger screen than a smartphone. User can easily found what they need on a PC. The smartphone has a very small screen this creates a problem. To be able to further customize the Home will give user tremendous usefulness.

I just read the entire article and I have to say that it is nothing more than clickbait/fanboism/wishful thinking.

Apple blew a huge lead in the phone industry and there's nothing to prevent the same thing happening to the tablet industry. iOS is so very very stagnant and locked down. In 2007/8 it was awesome. Now? Meh.

Reality check here too -- iOS has never held a market share lead in the global phone industry, especially this mythical "huge lead" that the lazy tech press keeps ascribing to Apple. The meme of the moment is that Apple is doomed -- never mind the actual market share, unit sales, and revenue data -- the tech press can only perpetuate this story by making crap up. The fact of the matter is that iOS has consistently held either the #2 or #3 market position for at least the past 3+ years, yet controls 2/3 of the smartphone industry profits. Android's unit sales ascent has been at the expense of Symbian and Blackberry. Stagnant? Whatever. I just want my devices to perform the functions that I use well. I prefer quality over quantity. Useful over novel. I don't need a laundry list of new half-baked checkbox features that I will never use. New or different is not the same thing as better.

Reality check here too -- iOS has never held a market share head in the global phone industry, especially this mythical "huge lead" that the lazy tech press keeps ascribing to Apple. The meme of the moment is that Apple is doomed -- never mind the actual market share, unit sales, and revenue data -- the tech press can only perpetuate this story by making . The fact of the matter is that iOS has consistently held either the #2 or #3 market position for at least the past 3+ years, yet controls 2/3 of the smartphone industry profits. Android's unit sales ascent has been at the expense of Symbian and Blackberry. Stagnant? Whatever. I just want my devices to perform the functions that I use well. I don't need a laundry list of new half-baked checkbox features that I will never use.

I wonder if he'll post any evidence to show that Apple had any monumental lead in unit marketshare with the iPhone or iOS worldwide. The only leads they've ever had are in profits, mindshare and user satisfaction, which they still have a huge lead in.Edited by SolipsismX - 4/6/13 at 1:46pm

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Applesauce007 Would a new Apple search engine need years of user input to learn & evolve into something comparable to Google's?

I guess that it would take a long time if they used similar search algorithms as google to scan and index the entire Internet. I am no search expert but Siri appears to use different knowledge base sources that have already been developed and can be improved separately. Apple hired William Stasior of amazon A9 fame and Altavista fame to manage Siri last year but they had been building Siri search well before that. Lets see what they come up with. The Altavista was the Google of its time period. Then Google took over. Perhaps Stasior can come back with Siri.

I just read the entire article and I have to say that it is nothing more than clickbait/fanboism/wishful thinking.

Apple blew a huge lead in the phone industry and there's nothing to prevent the same thing happening to the tablet industry. iOS is so very very stagnant and locked down. In 2007/8 it was awesome. Now? Meh.

If you only bought hardware, that might be relevant. When you add in software, a Windows server is far more expensive. Look at the comparison in tihs article.
So the fact that I miscapitalized it somehow eliminates the ones that I've bought?

What it shows is that, once again, you are passing on what you read here and there as real knowledge. If you spend your noses amongst servers and computers accumulating first hand knowledge, you wouldn't make the mistakes that you regularly do, and attack issues from the periphery like you regularly do. That's ok by me, though. You are what you are.

Well, it's possible the person meant "technology lead," or "user experience lead" or even "1337ness lead" which is a more subjective thing to measure (and hence fodder for flame wars). But you are correct as far as market share lead: Apple started with zero percent of the market and that has been growing worldwide since 2007.

- the low end experience catching up to the high end. I can get a huge screen phone from Samsung for half the price of an iPhone, that does nearly everything nearly as good. The Galaxy grand is basically a cheaped down version of an SGS4 - it's a SGS2 with a 5" screen.

...and what is the resolution of that 5" screen?

Due to the slower processor/cpu combination in order to cut costs, you'll find they don't work that well and due to word of mouth, don't sell that well.

Better than my Bose, better than my Skullcandy's, listening to Mozart through my LeBron James limited edition PowerBeats by Dre is almost as good as my Sennheisers.

All Apple has to do is offer a search solution that provides great results on page one, unlike Google who is packing page one with sponsored results more and more (Ad companies just can't help themselves).

One of the reasons I think that Google gets such support is that they are a whore for so many companies who rely upon them for advertising. Many of these companies are also tied to or have ownership of media outlets, investment firms, government lobbying, etc. Therein lies apple's biggest challenge - it is the conglomerate business and advertising as usual good ole bois - whose job it is to manipulate public perception and markets for their own interests.

Apple is going to have to really turn it up a notch to make any headway against the collective status woe.

I just read the entire article and I have to say that it is nothing more than clickbait/fanboism/wishful thinking.

Apple blew a huge lead in the phone industry and there's nothing to prevent the same thing happening to the tablet industry. iOS is so very very stagnant and locked down. In 2007/8 it was awesome. Now? Meh.

Tell us about this "huge lead", seeing as how since day one in 2007, first Nokia and then Samsung have dominated worldwide handset sales, by a significant factor, prior to Nokia at the turn of the century, it was Motorola who dominated.

This is not about closed v. open. Facebook Home more or less puts Android in the background. Instead of making a single Facebook phone, Home will turn existing Androids into one if Home is downloaded. You think Apple will allow that?

Why not? Apple still make money selling phones and various services. Use some imagination. For example, Department of Defense can customize Home to suit the needs for combats.

Apple faithfuls should not be disillusioned by the huge market shares of Android based devices abroad. The telecoms in foreign countries operate differently from AT&T, Verizon, etc. The single most important thing is they don't charge monthly for a data plan. You combine this with companies like Samsung, Huawei, ZTE selling low end of smartphones at about the same price as feature phones. So for the large amount of users that don't need a smartphone it is a no brainer to choose an so-called Android based smartphone instead of a feature phone. So what Samsung, Huawei, ZTE are doing is simply replacing feature phone users with a cheap smartphone. They will not consume too much data. Why should Apple pursue such group of users with a cheap iPhone? The cheap Android phones are crippled. So they will not retain these users once they decided to use data.

This is more easily understood when you compare to the situation in US. The iOS actually is gaining market share over Android recently.

Apple faithfuls should not be disillusioned by the huge market shares of Android based devices abroad. The telecoms in foreign countries operate differently from AT&T, Verizon, etc. The single most important thing is they don't charge monthly for a data plan. You combine this with companies like Samsung, Huawei, ZTE selling low end of smartphones at about the same price as feature phones. So for the large amount of users that don't need a smartphone it is a no brainer to choose an so-called Android based smartphone instead of a feature phone. So what Samsung, Huawei, ZTE are doing is simply replacing feature phone users with a cheap smartphone. They will not consume too much data. Why should Apple pursue such group of users with a cheap iPhone? The cheap Android phones are crippled. So they will not retain these users once they decided to use data.

This is more easily understood when you compare to the situation in US. The iOS actually is gaining market share over Android recently.

I'm in Australia the telecoms basically operate the same as AT&T, Verizon, etc, we are NOT part of the USA.

Better than my Bose, better than my Skullcandy's, listening to Mozart through my LeBron James limited edition PowerBeats by Dre is almost as good as my Sennheisers.

Many Apple fans insist that Apple will not open up iOS to FB because Apple is a closed system. I think they need to think twice. Closed system may be ok for PCs because PCs are powerful and has a much bigger screen than a smartphone. User can easily found what they need on a PC. The smartphone has a very small screen this creates a problem. To be able to further customize the Home will give user tremendous usefulness.

Apple already integrated FB into iOS 6 last year. Swipe down to post a status, directly post your photos. What isn't clear is if people really want to replace their own wallpaper pic with a stream of other people's stuff. Most people consider their phone their own, and customize it accordingly, and don't want it to be a FB stream.

What other value could FB offer iPhone users? iOS social integration can keep getting better, but it doesn't seem like anyone really wants FB to own their phone, except FB itself.

Apple Maps did NOT effect sales of GPS units like Garmin and Tom Tom, it was first Nokia's excellent Symbian maps (such as that on the superb Nokia N95) and then Android, that came with drive by drive navigation out of the box. Apple Maps was still born, and still is. Sorry!

Well actually.... Nokia acquired Navteq toward the end of 2007. Prior to that, it had operated Smart2Go since 2001. Nokia didn't offer turn by turn maps until Jan 2010 in Ovi Maps 3.0.

So if you're trying to solely credit Nokia's maps with the collapse of the stock price of TomTom and Garmin, you need to review your dates. The Nokia N95 may certainly have helped contribute to the popping of the dedicated GPS bubble but if you review history you'll find that the iPhone was outselling the N95 even in Europe in 2007, the year both appeared on the market.

I never saw Apple entering the low just out of the notion of gaining market share. Market share does say something, but not much. Profit and sustained growth are all that ever really mattered. Apple could care less about market share as long as their profits remain healthy and sustainable. It is only Google that is dependent upon market share because that is what drives their profits. More people using Android = more people using Google and getting more ad hits. Their entire model completely runs on market share.

I had always hoped that Apple would never go the low end route, and I still dont think they have or will. They only time Apple enters the "low end" is when there is a form factor reason for going small, not a market share reason.

I highly doubt still that they would develop a low end iPhone when they can simply just pump out the perfectly good older iPhones, which are still more than capable of running the latest iOS.

So this led me to this train of thought... We have all heard major rumors of a cheap iPhone. We have all heard major rumors of the iWatch. Could they be the same product?Edited by ScrittoreSabino - 4/6/13 at 8:39pm